


Cornflower Blue Eyes

by depugnare



Series: Never Gonna Be a Whole Fic [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, catfa, catws, the myth of captain america
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7535509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depugnare/pseuds/depugnare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and a mouth like genocide</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cornflower Blue Eyes

Steve Rogers has always had beautiful eyes. Blue fringed with white-gold when he was born (tinged with blood, a difficult birth, one that almost ripped his mother from the world along with him). They are clear and bright, sun and sky, when everything else about him is pale and rheumy. Weak lungs that make his breathing sound like a dog choking on meat. Bones twisted, heart beating like the grinding of tank treads (uneven, caught it mud, that is his father in his chest, gasping, gasping, dead). He is an ugly babe, but his eyes are like the softest blue of early spring, a sigh. Everyone is entranced by them, they don’t notice his head tilted to the left, right ear filled with silence. Sarah Rogers does not smother her son, though it would be kinder. (She would later look at him, a whip-thin man with sharp bones and a sharper smile, and think that maybe she should have. Maybe she shouldn’t have released him onto the world.)

(Bucky Barnes will think that too, horror stricken when he sees those eyes in a face on a body built to destroy nations. What have you done, what have you done, what have you-)

His mouth is soft, like cream. Waxing and waning with his health, they are hot and full of blood when he’s healthy (sometimes the blood is on the outside, freed by fists and teeth, smeared from lips to ear). Pink, like magnolias. They are pale and thin when his body is the same, aching from sickness, like his blood is leaching away. (His life is held by them, wit and stubbornness and fight. A Steve Rogers that cannot speak is not Steve Rogers at all.). He gnaws at them, a dog with a bone, chewing at them as he chokes on words he should swallow down, if he knew was good for him. He doesn’t. They burst forth, like a nest of hornets, and sometimes they come back to sting him. They struggle to contain a cough (a possible sign of impending illness, a sure sign of approaching unemployment) and fail. They want to form three words, important words, but can’t. They only spit orders and encourage fights, self-consuming. (They are mesmerizing, weaving words like silver chains. These take root in Bucky Barnes’ heart and never break. These wrap around his throat and pull him down.) People follow him, this man that holds the sky. War sounds so honey-sweet when battle cries come from his lips.

(Like flies in amber, they are held tight by him. Would die for him. Would kill for him. It is a terrible thing, to be made a legend while still alive.)


End file.
